Book of Travels News

This version contains all previous Beta updates as below. Additionally we have the following known issues in this version:

• WASD Movement still tracks mouse cursor position. If you are unable to walk please ensure your mouse is in the center of the screen.
  
• Player may become stuck on boats: You should be able to press the Right Alt Key (Alt GR) and select unstuck should you encounter this issue.
  

Update to a new Unity Input System to allow for new control schemes:

• Added WASD movement.
  
• Changed how the "Tab functionality" works. Previously it showed all the nametags of interactable NPCs, now it does so in a range around the player while also highlighting pickups and other interactable objects in the world.
  
• Added foundations for future controller support.
  
• Added functionality for Key-binding in the settings menu.
  

Implemented some previously unavailable items in the Settings Menu:

• Voice Volume slider
  
• UI Size dropdown. Choose between Small, Default, Large.
  
• Reset Interface Positions. Resets all user moved UI to their default positions after closing the menu.
  
• Always Notify Effect Cards. Toggle to always show effect card notifications.
  
• Small Emotes. Toggle to show smaller-sized emotes.
  
• Always Show Party Names. Toggle to always show your party members' nameplates.
  
• Show Selection Circles. Toggle to show selections circles around the character you have currently selected.
  
• Show Area of Effect Range. Toggle to show the AoE circle for skills.
  
• Show Combat Circle. Toggle to show the circle around a combat encounter.
  
• Show Walk Arrow. Toggle to show the walking arrow when you use click to walk.
  
• Disable Unity Analytics. Toggle to enable/disable Unity Analytics.
  
• Show Effect Cooldown. Toggle to show the effect duration when hovering over an effect card.
  
• Tool Tip Speed. Slider to choose the speed at which tool tips appear when hovering over UI elements.
  
• Emote Opacity. Slider to choose the opacity of emotes.
  
• Changes to Resolution settings
  

Platform Specific Fixes:

• Changed anti-aliasing method for OSX clients
  
• Updated Steamworks .NET to 20.1.0
  

General Fixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused combat to not initiate properly.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPC nametags to not appear when pressing Tab until they had been interacted with at least once.
  
• Temporarily removed dockhand worker to stop slide backwards and other movement issues
  
• Tea effects will now stack properly
  
• Poems will not appear when in menus anymore
  
• Calm Trait will now increase energy replenish to 1.25% instead of 1% when eating edibles.
  
• Glutton Trait will now decrease energy replenish to 0.75% instead of 0% when eating edibles.
  
• Self-Sacrifice Trait will now decrease energy replenish to 0.75% instead of 0% when eating edibles.
  
• You now cannot cancel a trade anymore after a trade has been confirmed.
  
• Wasteful trait will now have a chance to discard 2 - 3 items instead of only 2.
  
• NPC Interaction adjustments so the speech bubble will now appear on the first click
  
• Gave every wearable "Body" item a unique description.
  
• Fix for if your inventory is full when receiving a quest item the quest will break
  
• Change to item UI for value layout so value appears at the top
  
• Fix for Kasa Incident quest during Night time encounters.
  
• Added four more poems for the train headed west from Crossings.
  
• Wrote 4 poems for every different departure of ferries and trains.
  
• Added a more descriptions to arm and glove items. (Around 5000 words)
  
• Edible items without a unique description have now received one.
  
• Endeavour tutorial text change
  
• Added around 7000 new words worth of item descriptions for Edible items (Bread, cakes, etc) and fixed a couple of text errors.
  
• Fix for boat leaving the player in the water in West_09
  
• Fix for Endeavour requirements flash when loading Endeavour
  
• Character customization should now work in game
  
• Fix for Large Dried Fish wrong item type
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the debug menu to always display the current weekday as Monday
  
• Temporary time adjustments
  
• Improvements to water reflections
  

[h2]Dear Traveller,[/h2]

We are working on a lot of exciting things, as well as fixes and optimisation (some of which you can try out before it goes on the live environment by logging on to the beta branch) - but today I'd like to take a quick moment to shine a light on what improvements we are doing specifically for the vehicles of Braided Shore.

We all love trains and boats but we know that, in our game, they could function better and be more intuitive to use. We wanted to change that, and the changes that I'm going to detail in this post are expected to begin rolling out in the coming weeks.

Screenshot by Steam user "Lunafreya"

First off, when you board a vehicle you will immediately sit down and begin resting. There's no sense in straining yourself when occupying a cosy vehicle, right? You will also be able to check your map and inventory without automatically disembarking your mode of transport, which will be handy for plotting out your next course of action.

Currently, as you may know, there is a time-to-departure progress bar that indicates how long you have to wait until the vehicle in question starts heading out. Instead of that, we're rebuilding the system to convey that information to you in a more immersive way through visual and auditory cues like horns, whistles, smokestack changes, and announcements from the conductor.

On top of that station masters and dockhands will provide you with information about expected arrivals and departures for the trains and boats of Braided Shore. You will also be required to have a train or boat pass to take the trip, which will be consumed from the inventory upon boarding. Of course, we're also working on ironing out bugs and glitches causing you and your vehicle to end up in unintended places.

Lastly, the team is looking at ways to enable the player to... partake in some ill-advised travelling etiquette. Obviously, no one at Might and Delight formally recommends you to, say, take a boat ride during a storm. Or jump off a train mid-journey. Or try to sneak onboard a vehicle without paying for a pass. But we kind of do want you to be able to, and then face the consequences of those actions. Let's call it a "dismantling of safety measures". Because what fun are those?

Until next time! May your tea never grow cold.

Best wishes,
Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

[h2]Dear Traveller,[/h2]

Today we wanted to talk about how our work looks in regards to the story of Book of Travels. We're thinking a lot about how we want to present the larger story of the game to the player, and how to expand it over time while still holding true to our original vision and design philosophies about not wanting to hold the player's hand too tightly or spoon feed them.

When it comes to story in the world of Braided Shore, there is much to do. We are both looking to introduce more lore details to the world, and to expose the intrigue of the Prologue so that more players have the chance to find and play through it.

We’re introducing new lore both through item descriptions and, eventually, new encounters and events. We want the storytelling of Book of Travels to feel intuitive, and like something you unveil as you travel. With every item in the game world telling you bits and pieces of information, we’re hoping to add another layer to your roleplaying and immersion.



We also want the world to feel alive, whether you’re wandering through the deep woods or bartering in a bustling town. Ensuring that interactions with NPCs feels worthwhile, and that the world highlights the quests and events available to you, is also a major focus of our current work.

When looking at the steam achievements, and talking to the community, we can tell that the main intrigue of the Prologue is incredibly hard to find, and that many players simply have not played through it. We want to expose this story to the player, and ensure that the way we tell the story is in line with how the game is played; what if there wasn’t a one singular path to the great city of Kasa? What if there was a way for Travellers to find many clues that point to the city, and the cause of its peculiar lockdown?

This autumn and winter, you can expect hundreds of new item descriptions in-game (our story team has already written over 15 000 words of new lore in the past two weeks), many new dialogues and small encounters, as well as a mystery that seems to permeate the lands of Braided Shore.

For a behind the scenes peek at what we’re up to, you can find our work on the Beta, where it will be featured alongside bug fixes, polish of features, and experiments with new gameplay mechanics.
We’re hoping that, from the very start of the game, you’ll feel the call of the open road, and that the stories you encounter along the way will not only entertain, but stay with you whenever you brew a soothing cup of tea, or when you walk past a grassy field and feel like you might spot omin hiding amongst the underbrush.

You'll hear more from us in the coming weeks. As always, we encourage you to sound off in the comments and on the forums about what you think of any new information we put out.

Until next time, Traveller. May your tea never grow cold...
Best wishes,
The Might and Delight team

ssociate editor Lauren Morton chose Book of Travels as her personal pick for game of the year in 2021, but she also acknowledged that its unusual ways—it's "distinctly inconvenient," as she put it—might put some players off. That appeared to be the case in December 2021, when developer Might and Delight laid off a large portion of its staff, although it vowed to continue development of the game...
Read more.

We want to thank you for your patience. As you are aware we had some significant issues that we needed to take time to solve that we estimated would take 3 months. We are now 3 months and 1 week after that and finally have some news for you as well as a new Beta Test Environment for you to use.

If you followed our Tech Blogs you would have seen that we were doing “things” but as it was all short comments aimed at internal users it may not have made a lot of sense. In essence, what we have done is change some of the core tech the game uses as well as streamlined some of our production pipelines. That main change with this is an update of the Unity Engine from a 2019 version to the newer 2021.3.3f1 version. If you look this up you will see that yes there are newer versions, however we needed one that offers Long Term Support as well as not jumping too far ahead from the 2019 version.

Updating the engine comes with several benefits. You should initially notice that the game *feels* a bit smoother but mostly it allows us to add some new technologies in that we can use in the near future to give you better gameplay, from things like a new Input System (affecting mouse movement and potential controller support) to new cinematic cameras and live real time events. Now this stage is complete we need to present you with an updated Road Map which will be coming in the near future that will explain what we will fix and change as well as provide some detail on new content that we know you are all excited to hear about and play.

As well as the engine update we have started to make other performance improvements by re-writing portions of code and changing some visual effects to give a higher frame rate. The area you will see the biggest change here is with water. We use a very detailed reflection system which lead to water being always on, which is very costly. We have now managed to improve this system so only a small amount of water around your character is rendered leading to a significant frame rate improvement.

Overall one thing we need to avoid is making things worse. The problem with game development, especially in small teams, is being able to test all of the content to make sure its bug free and smooth before it gets released. This is one of the benefits of early access but also one of its greatest curses. One thing that greatly aids in this is a Beta environment, and that is what we want to share with you today.

Please understand – a version released on the Beta environment will be more unstable than one released on retail. It will also be a lot more restricted. However it allows us to have people play test updated versions without impacting the majority of players. We have now prepared an updated version of the game and propped it on the Beta Environment for you to try out if you wish to take part in testing new features.

Also it is important to realize that we have only addressed underlying core tech issues and general performance. Many of you wait for specific issues to be fixed regarding quests etc and these are not delivered as part of this update but will be addressed soon.

Be aware of the following:

• The Beta Environment is more unstable than retail.
  
• The Beta Environment will be turned off and restart at random with no notice.
  
• Characters created on the Beta environment will be wiped periodically – do not use this for long term game play.
  
• Only 7 seats exist per region – therefore only a total of 28 people can play on Beta at any one time.
  
• On Beta you will occasionally see content that is not fully known by other players. Please avoid Spoilers.
  

This gives us the following development pipeline so you can understand how we will release content going forward, where the quality of the game needs to be higher in each stage before it can be released to the next. This environment is Windows PC only.

Local Development environment –> Internal QA environment –> External Test environment –> Public Beta environment –> Public Retail environment.

Our goal is that a version will spend a week on the Public Beta environment before moving to retail. For those of you who play the current build on this Beta environment please be aware of the following issues:

• Boats will periodically teleport you when they reach docks – this might lead you to landing in water and having to walk to land.
  
• Some water has rapid wave effects (most notably in Siram Fields)
  
• The game client might hang during logout. You should be able to close it with Alt+F4
  

You may join with the password BetaShore2022 - for details on how to join a Steam Beta click the "Discuss" button below.

Thank you for your patience,
Joe & the team at Might and Delight